Notes From Wonderland

So I was intrigued by this whole bloggy/forum things and thought I'd give it a test drive. What a better first topic than ME?!?! (Don't answer that)

Well, I am a 33-year old journalist who grew up wanting to draw and write comics. Even when attending I just assumed that is what I would do. I did a daily strip called Slacker Life http://www.drunkduck.com/Slacker_Life for a few years in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student newspaper for the University of Arizona.

I have been drawing since my mom would first let me hold a pencil and fell in love with comics when a crazy aunt bought me a stack of comic for Christmas when she could afford nothing else. To me at age three or four it was an awesome gift and I was an avid collector until the mid-90Ã¢â¬â¢s when the hobby became to expensive. I still occasionally pick up the odd graphic novel or beat up copy at used bookstores.

I was a bit older when I fell in love with the daily newspaper strip. Peanuts and Garfield were the first I gravitated to, but by the time I was in high school I was enthralled with Bloom County, the Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes.

Today I still love newspaper strips but have also fully embraced web comics, mostly because of the edginess afforded on the Web.

I am also a writer. Professionally I am a journalist, but I have written two movie screenplays and have a novel about ÃÂ½ way finished.

Biggest Influences Ã¢â¬â CartoonsBerke Breathed Ã¢â¬â Bloom County really clicked on the light for me. The art, the story telling. I see a huge influence in my story telling.Gary Trudeau Ã¢â¬â I read a collection of his Yale college strips that really influenced me. I see a lot of his work in what I did on Slacker LifeBill Watterson - Calvin and Hobbes is the finest comic strip ever in my opinion. Darby Conelly Ã¢â¬â Get Fuzzy sort of reignited a passion for comic strips. It never went away, but he was the first Ã¢â¬ÅnewÃ¢â¬Â cartoonist to make me take notice.Jeph Jaques Ã¢â¬â Questionable Content was one of the first webcomic I read and made me think Ã¢â¬Åhey there is an avenue for meÃ¢â¬Â

Biggest Influences Ã¢â¬â ComicsPaul Smith Ã¢â¬â DonÃ¢â¬â¢t know if I would call myself a huge fan, but for some reason I started drawing my triangle noses because of some of his old X-Men issues.Matt Wagner Ã¢â¬â His run on Demon and Mage was an influence artistically. DonÃ¢â¬â¢t know if you can see it in the cartoony stuff, but my more Ã¢â¬ÅseriousÃ¢â¬Â stuff has some of his influence in it.Arthur Adams Ã¢â¬â Again, donÃ¢â¬â¢t know if it shows up in my work, but I copied a lot of things from Adams when I was developing my style.Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison Ã¢â¬â These writers made me rethink how comics could be written.